BSkyB’S stranglehold on premium rights to movies from Hollywood’s six biggest
studios looks set to be broken after Netflix, the US film-streaming service,
vowed to outbid it for the rights.

Reed Hastings, the founder and chief executive of the US firm, told The Sunday Telegraph that BSkyB was a “powerful, formidable competitor” but that Netflix was prepared to invest heavily to win the rights.

“We will be really aggressive in our bidding,” he said. “It may be that we win in the first round. It may be that it takes two or three years, but we’re incredibly confident that we will win the bidding for some of Pay 1 [the first window rights].”

Earlier this year, the Competition Commission ruled that BSkyB could continue to hold the rights because of the rise of Netflix and similar services such as Amazon’s LoveFilm. They enable customers to rent films and television series by downloading or streaming them online.

The ruling offered a major boost to BSkyB, which had been fearful of having to trade away some of the rights that are key in getting customers to be subscribers.

The company has already suffered one major content setback this year, after BT made a surprise entry into the market for Premier League football rights, securing 114 matches and forcing up the price for BSkyB. The satellite broadcaster, which is 39pc-owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, ended up paying about 40pc more than in previous years for just one extra match.

The document reveals that BSkyB was concerned that it would not be able to compete with Netflix’s prices, based on its US business. “Netflix’s business model is based on providing a comparable range of content at a lower price than is possible through a traditional pay TV provider,” BSkyB said.

BSkyB also predicted that Google could launch its own streaming service, based around YouTube.